It’s a cliché of feminist media to bemoan the “time bind” that keeps women tied to the double duties of working and parenting. The solution offered to this problem, however, often boils down to simply working more. “Don’t lose sight of your goals!” “Lean in!” As if liberation were the last point on the day’s checklist. The question “Can women have it all?” distills decades of frustration and exhaustion into a problem of better scheduling: How can women reconcile an interminable workday with the lion’s share of housekeeping and childrearing?

Neither option on its own is desirable; together, they are unbearable. Life shouldn’t be reduced to a balance between waged work and housework, a balance between work and work. Instead, if we are concerned about fixing the “time bind,” we should do the unimaginable: ask for more time.

The yearly hours of an average worker increased by 181 from 1979 to 2007, according to a 2013 Economic Policy Institute report—the equivalent of each working adult taking on an additional 4.5 weeks per year. Meanwhile, wages have stagnated. Extended paid vacation time, even paid maternity leave, is still not available to many Americans. Most work deemed unworthy of pay—childcare and housework—remains primarily women’s responsibility and goes uncompensated. These responsibilities add up. The average American woman spends more than two and a half hours a day on house and care work; that’s forty-two days of the year consumed by noncompensated efforts. Even kids can’t escape the trend of curtailed time. The hours spent on homework have increased 51 percent since 1981.

In response, we might begin to imagine a world without work (or at least much less of it). The proposition for more time has been forcefully articulated by theorist Kathi Weeks in her book The Problem with Work. In order to enact this vision, Weeks proposes revisiting the idea of Universal Basic Income. A popular proposal in the 1970s supported by welfare rights workers and, in a reduced form, by the Nixon White House, basic income provides each adult with a fixed sum per year, regardless of whether or not they are employed. This money would be distributed equally from the government to all adult citizens on a monthly or yearly basis. It would be unconditional. The amount would not vary on family size or marital status or the recipient’s education level or salary.

A basic income would provide a minimum living standard. While not enough to replace a salary, it would begin to eradicate poverty and minimize income inequality. Variations on basic income have been implemented successfully. In Brazil, for example, about a fourth of citizens are covered by the Bolsa Família, a growing program that seeks to provide adults with direct cash transfers. Pilot programs have been implemented in places as varied as Namibia and Manitoba. Indeed, a modified form of basic income already exists in the United States: since 1976, residents of Alaska have received yearly shares of the state’s oil revenue. These programs have been shown to improve the quality of life of their participants; in the ten years since Brazil has had Bolsa Família, the number of Brazilians living in poverty has been cut by more than half. The pilot study conducted in Manitoba linked the policy not only with financial well-being but also with increased high school graduation rates and decreased hospitalization. It is perhaps no wonder that the idea of a basic income has grown in popularity. The Dutch city of Utrecht recently announced that it would be experimenting with a basic income in the summer of 2015. In the United States, a basic income has been advocated by policy analysts on both the left and the right.

A basic income would offer a social safety net—especially important in a time of economic instability. But it would also change the lives of its recipients in more qualitative ways. The basic income would ensure that individuals were financially solvent regardless of their jobs, decoupling economic status and employment. By offering money unconditionally, without a requirement for work or education, a basic income would offer financial support without stigma, unlike the current welfare-to-work system. Further, by giving individuals money that did not come directly from salaries, the basic income would also offer freedom and autonomy independent of waged work. Together with a shorter workweek, it would mean that individuals would be less dependent on their own labor to get by. It would give them room to explore their interests and ideas outside of work. It might very well give them more time.

Critics of basic income have argued that unconditional money transfers are no replacement for a strong welfare system, and indeed, a basic income cannot exist on its own. The sum given would have to be substantial yet not so large that it takes away from existing social welfare programs like health care and education. Further, while it would do much to reduce dependence on waged work, a basic income alone could not ensure that the burden of caregiving and household work would be distributed equally among men and women. Research done in Nordic countries suggests that gender-blind redistribution of money without incentives may not bring about equality between men and women; given the same amount of money to watch television as to nurse a child, an individual might choose the former. For this reason, the basic income could not be the only change; state supported childcare would be needed to take on part of the duties of housework.

So let us say that there is indeed a way to create more time. The question then becomes: time for what? Weeks argues that it is only politically and socially acceptable to ask for time for two things: work and the family. Asking for anything else is considered extravagant, unrealistic, and worse—lazy. Yet life is not contained in these two spheres, and it neglects the wholeness of existence to try to shuttle it away into these two areas.

Thinking about a world with more time would entail a more theoretical shift: it would mean decentering waged work from a feminist conception of a better life. Since the second wave, much of feminism has upheld waged work and work outside the home as a way for women to find independence and freedom. Mainstream feminists have often praised the workplace as the site of great gains for women and encouraged women to work and better the conditions of their workplaces through activism, professional organizations, and legal campaigns. These efforts have improved the lives of many women by offering them economic stability and opportunities once only open to men.

But waged work is itself constricting and demanding—hardly liberation itself. As women have entered the workplace, the kinds of jobs they take have often declined in quality, paying less, demanding more, and becoming more unstable and restricting. Work does not foster independence or freedom when individuals cannot choose where they work or the conditions under which they do so. Placing work at the core of a feminist demand obscures work’s problems and blinds us to life outside of it.

Instead, as we develop policies and steps forward, we should try to envision lives in which work is but one small part. What would people do with their free time? Anything they wanted! More time would mean better and stronger friendships, relationships not crammed in between work hours, family obligations, and sleep. It would give people the chance to explore their interests, creating room for activism or artistic endeavors. It would mean the opportunity for creativity and taking chances, but also fun and leisure and goofing off—all the things that are inaccessible when work consumes too much of the day. Most importantly, more time would mean not having to justify its use. One wouldn’t need to do things with this time; one could spend it just by enjoying being alive.

Rather than fighting for more and better work, we should fight for more time to use as we please. Proposals like a universal basic income may well lead to this. Most importantly, in thinking about the time bind, we should keep in mind what it would mean to be really free from it. We should keep in mind the full possibilities of liberation: what we want is not to be allowed to work more or in better conditions, but to be allowed to live as we see fit.

Austin Frerick, who launched a bid for Iowa’s third congressional district on an antimonopoly platform, dropped out when party leaders made it clear that they preferred his better-funded opponents. Photo courtesy of Austin Frerick.

Early voting locations in the Indianapolis metro area in 2016, via IndyStar.

An Eritrean refugee in Khartoum. Photo by John Power.

Common migration routes from East Africa to Europe. Route information adapted from the International Organization for Migration, August 2015, by Colin Kinniburgh. Countries party to the Khartoum process are shaded in orange (note: not all shown on this map).

Khartoum as seen from the river Nile. Photo by John Power.

At the 1936 International Conference of Business Cycle Institutes, sponsored by the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research, Vienna. Ludwig von Mises is seated in the center with mustache and cigarette. Gottfried Haberler also pictured, at right. (Source)

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Sketch for a 1976 poster by the New York Wages for Housework Committee (MayDay Rooms / Creative Commons)

In 1896, William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat from Nebraska, ran for president on a fusion ticket with the Populist Party. This cartoonist from a Republican magazine thought the “Popocratic” ticket was too ideologically mismatched to win. Bryan did lose, but his campaign, the first of three he waged for the White House, transformed the Democrats into an anti-corporate, pro-labor party. Cartoon from Judge (1896) via Library of Congress

Political strategist Jessica Byrd. Courtesy of Three Points Strategies.

Stacey Abrams, Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia. Photo courtesy of David Kidd/Governing.

A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (Courtesy of Nara Milanich)

A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (Courtesy of Nara Milanich)

A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (Courtesy of Nara Milanich)

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The Kurds

[W]hen we refer to all Kurdish fighters synonymously, we simply blur the fact that they have very different politics. . . right now, yes, the people are facing the Islamic State threat, so it’s very important to have a unified focus. But the truth is, ideologically and politically these are very, very different systems. Actually almost opposite to each other. —Dilar Dirik, “Rojava vs. the World,” February 2015

The Kurds, who share ethnic and cultural similarities with Iranians and are mostly Muslim by religion (largely Sunni but with many minorities), have long struggled for self-determination. After World War I, their lands were divided up between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. In Iran, though there have been small separatist movements, Kurds are mostly subjected to the same repressive treatment as everyone else (though they also face Persian and Shi’ite chauvinism, and a number of Kurdish political prisoners were recently executed). The situation is worse in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, where the Kurds are a minority people subjected to ethnically targeted violations of human rights.

Iraq: In 1986–89, Saddam Hussein conducted a genocidal campaign in which tens of thousands were murdered and thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed, including by bombing and chemical warfare. After the first Gulf War, the UN sought to establish a safe haven in parts of Kurdistan, and the United States and UK set up a no-fly zone. In 2003, the Kurdish peshmerga sided with the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein. In 2005, after a long struggle with Baghdad, the Iraqi Kurds won constitutional recognition of their autonomous region, and the Kurdistan Regional Government has since signed oil contracts with a number of Western oil companies as well as with Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan has two main political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), both clan-based and patriarchal.

Turkey: For much of its modern history, Turkey has pursued a policy of forced assimilation towards its minority peoples; this policy is particularly stringent in the case of the Kurds—until recently referred to as the “mountain Turks”—who make up 20 percent of the total population. The policy has included forced population transfers; a ban on use of the Kurdish language, costume, music, festivals, and names; and extreme repression of any attempt at resistance. Large revolts were suppressed in 1925, 1930, and 1938, and the repression escalated with the formation of the PKK as a national liberation party, resulting in civil war in the Kurdish region from 1984 to 1999.

Syria: Kurds make up perhaps 15 percent of the population and live mostly in the northeastern part of Syria. In 1962, after Syria was declared an Arab republic, a large number of Kurds were stripped of their citizenship and declared aliens, which made it impossible for them to get an education, jobs, or any public benefits. Their land was given to Arabs. The PYD was founded in 2003 and immediately banned; its members were jailed and murdered, and a Kurdish uprising in Qamishli was met with severe military violence by the regime. When the uprising against Bashar al Assad began as part of the Arab Spring, Kurds participated, but after 2012, when they captured Kobani from the Syrian army, they withdrew most of their energy from the war against Assad in order to set up a liberated area. For this reason, some other parts of the Syrian resistance consider them Assad’s allies. The Kurds in turn cite examples of discrimination against them within the opposition.